Five Things I Learned at Novelists, Inc.

Zestful Blog Post #178

So I joined Novelists, Inc. this year, which is a professional organization for authors. The vast majority of members are female; I learned that the organization started as a splinter group from Romance Writers of America. Last week I attended the annual conference, in St. Pete Beach (which is the real name of the town, separate from St. Petersburg.) (Unpaid plug for the Tradewinds resort hotel: If you’re looking for a place to have a midsized conference (200-300 people), you can’t go wrong there. Great layout & staff, many conveniences, & a terrific beach on the Gulf.)

Met some nice and very accomplished folks. There were some heavy hitters in the presenters ranks—like bosses from Amazon, BookBub, Nook, Ingram, and top publishers. I felt the long weekend was worthwhile; attended sessions and took notes like mad. Learned a ton of stuff, & will probably blog in greater depth on some of it. Key takeaways:

• Lots of people in the writing/publishing business believe quality is the way to go; without great story, all the marketing in the world—whether you’re a trad- or self-published author—won’t help you achieve material success.

• Way more people in the business are convinced that marketing is the path to material success, as long as you keep pumping out titles.

• There are lots of dumpy-looking, middle-aged women in this world who make six figures writing genre fiction, mostly romance, mystery, and paranormal mutations of same. (Me, I have the dumpy-looking, middle-aged parts covered; the only missing part is the six figures.) Every man I met at the conference who was not a presenter was a husband-assistant. Really.

[But we’re all swans deep down, aren’t we?]

• Authors whose books are not in the Kindle Select program (meaning exclusively with Amazon) are angry with Amazon that they don’t get the same deals and advantages that Kindle Select authors get. The two guys who were there from Amazon did a great job escaping with their skins after their presentation.

• I spent lots of time going to marketing and promo sessions, but made time to go to some craft sessions as well, cuz craft is my thing. One major takeaway for me was that readers like deep, deep point of view. Sometimes I’ve wondered how detailed to make my characters’ thoughts; I like writing deep, but sometimes have pulled back, fearing the reader might be skipping this stuff. But after listening to a few editors who have worked with blockbuster bestsellers, I’m like, yeah! Deep POV is fun to write, and moreover, it develops your characters as nothing else does.

Example of deep POV? Which is better?:

• The next day, I felt uneasy.

• A rancid haze settled over me the next day, which was Thursday. It was as if the whole city had turned poisonous—as if micro-bubbles of toxin were raining down on the city, green in color, the exact chartreuse of the mittens of the tiny bully in my first-grade class who had used them to mash snow into my dumb pretty little face that winter, over and over. When the snow melted, she used mud. [from The Actress]

• And OK, here is one more takeaway, which makes six instead of five, but whatever: It's great to be an attendee. You can wear sneakers and pants and t-shirts and sit in the back and not have to worry about how white your teeth are or whether your lip gloss is still good. I realized that until this one, I've been a presenter at every conference I've ever been to as a published author. It costs more to be an attendee, but God is it great to wear sneakers and t-shirts every day.

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Inside Interior Dialogue

Zestful Blog Post #167

Before getting on to today’s post, here are a few announcements about new books by friends:

Congratulations to BJ Phillips, whose first novel, Hurricane Season, is now out from Desert Palm Press! That first one is always so special… We hear there’s more in the pipeline from BJ. (See the book and more about her at her web site, linked to her name just above.)

And it’s high time for a plug for my buddy and all-around gentleman (hey, those two things are not mutually exclusive) Neil Plakcy, who keeps writing and publishing top-selling books in several genres. A slew of his new books are featured on the front page of his website. I admire Neil’s work ethic and prodigious output. He’s really a role model for me, and what’s more, he’s a fellow Floridian—as is BJ, coincidentally.

I might add that both Neil and I will be at the Novelists, Inc. conference at St. Pete Beach later this year. We’ll be participants, not presenters. Novelists, Inc., or NINC, is an association of professional authors who are committed to a) writing quality fiction and b) selling the hell out of it. I’ll let you know how that conference goes!

Have I mentioned that I’ll be doing the Florida Writers Conference in Altamonte Springs this year? Sorry if this is a repeat, but they’ve put up much more information on their website now. I’ll be presenting a couple of workshops, participating in a panel discussion, and will also be available for individual conferences. They cost extra, but all the money goes to FWA and its special programs for aspiring authors.

Oh, and gosh, local friends alert! Join me at the Selby Library in Sarasota (the main one with the pudgy white columns downtown) at 6 p.m. this coming Tuesday, July 5. I’ll be doing “Looking for Trouble: Doing Research for Fiction is not for Sissies.” More here. It’s free.

OK, so the latest compendium from Writer’s Digest Books is freshly available, Crafting Dynamic Dialogue: The Complete Guide to Speaking, Conversing, Arguing, and Thinking in Fiction. It has four chapters by me, as well as multiple chapters from other WD stalwarts such as James Scott Bell, Jeff Gerke, and Gloria Kempton. And hey, gosh, the first reviewer on Amazon said this, in part: "The two chapters on Dialogue and Suspense by James Scott Bell and Internal Dialogue by Elizabeth Sims, are worth twice the price of this fine volume."

So, cool. Two of my chapters are excerpts from You’ve Got a Book in You, and a third is a reprint of one of my articles for WD magazine. The fourth, “Understanding Internal Dialogue,” is original to the book. The excellent Cris Freese, editor of the book, invited me to write something on internal dialogue, and I gladly took up the challenge.

I see this post is already getting long, but I wanted to include an in-depth excerpt from the chapter, and here it is:

[Excerpt begins]

For both form and format, you can select something that feels right for you and your manuscript’s style and voice. Read closely to distinguish the differences in the six versions of this passage:

Saturday night came, and still Sheila didn’t call. Marco sat at the window, drumming his fingers on the gritty sill. He felt like robbing a liquor store. Would a knife be sufficient? He didn’t know. [Entire passage, including inner voice, is third person, past tense.]

Saturday night came, and still Sheila didn’t call. Marco sat at the window, drumming his fingers on the gritty sill. I should hold up that liquor store tonight, I really should. Be something to do, anyway. I have my knife. [Narrative is third person, past tense; inner voice is first person, present. And the inner voice is rendered in direct thought-speech.]

Saturday night came, and still Sheila didn’t call. Marco sat at the window, drumming his fingers on the gritty sill. I should hold up that liquor store tonight, I really should. Be something to do, anyway. I have my knife. [The identical passage as above, with Marco’s thoughts in italics.]

Saturday night came, and still Sheila didn’t call. I sat at the window, drumming my fingers on the gritty sill. I should hold up that liquor store tonight, I really should. Be something to do, anyway. I have my knife. [Narrative is first person, past tense. The inner voice, in direct thought-speech, is first person, present.]

Saturday night came, and still Sheila didn’t call. Marco sat at the window, drumming his fingers on the gritty sill. I should hold up that liquor store tonight, I really should, he thought. Be something to do, anyway. He had his knife. [Narrative is third person, past tense. The inner voice is first person, past (though verging on present), and the narrative resumes in third person, past, in the final sentence.]

Saturday night comes, and still Sheila doesn’t call. I sit at the window, drumming my fingers on the gritty sill. I should rob that liquor store tonight, I really should. Be something to do, anyway. I have my knife. [Everything is first person, present.]

Any of these forms are correct, and they all have slightly different flavors—some seem more formal, some less. First person always reads as more informal and immediate. Just be as consistent as you can, once you’ve made your choice.

[End of excerpt]

This is the kind of attention to detail that marks out serious authors!

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